Jeh Johnson: Don't abolish ICE, reform it

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Saturday calls to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency are misguided and doing so “would compromise public safety.”

“During the Vietnam War, millions of Americans demanded an end to the war; no one seriously demanded that we abolish the entire Defense Department,” Johnson wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “Obviously, that would have completely compromised national security.”

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A former top Obama administration official, Johnson is now among the most high-profile voices in the Democratic Party distancing themselves from the progressive rallying cry adopted by a number of influential voices in the party, including a handful of possible 2020 candidates. Others like Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth have said the problem is not ICE, but the president in charge of setting its policies.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly highlighted the growing pushback on ICE, using the issue to attack Democrats as weak on immigration. Johnson wrote that one of the president's talking points — that abolishing the agency could hurt public safety — would be true if ICE was abolished outright.

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“To a lesser extent, the outright abolition of ICE would compromise public safety,” Johnson said. “ICE is a law-enforcement agency.”

The push to abolish ICE predated the intense media scrutiny of Trump's “zero tolerance” immigration policy that has led to the separation of migrant families. But activists latched on to ICE's reported role in enforcing those policies and in doing so have found a receptive audience from New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders.

Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan has said a bill he is sponsoring would end the agency within six months and create a commission to further examine the country’s immigration policies.

Pointing to how the agency was managed differently under his watch, Johnson said it would be better to reform its policies than to end it completely.

“Calls to abolish ICE only serve to sow even greater division in the American public and in its political leadership,” Johnson said, “damaging any remaining prospect of bipartisan immigration reform.”